[Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal [NOT UPDATED TO AE]

[kartoFlane]

You have to unpack the archives before they can be used by the program - ftldat is pretty good, though I'm not sure if it works on Mac. Alternatively, try KuroSaru's FTL Dat Manager, open the .dat files in FTL installation directory and use the Export button to unpack them.

As for the ship browser, that's strange - I can move freely around using the Favourites at the left side of the browser, and it loads the applications folder without a hitch (I don't have anything custom installed on the VM so that might be a reason, but then again it only has 2GB of RAM at its disposal). Try to avoid using double-click to get inside folders, since the browser is looking for directories, not files.

As for the names, yes, that's true, but that matters only for the game itself, and Superluminal takes care of that during exporting. File names don't matter to the editor.

edit: scratch that, just found a bug in image loading, gonna fix it
edit 2: fixed, the app should no longer crash when loading images.
edit 3: notes from the previous post:

• fixed ship projects, but they still need to be tested to confirm if I haven't missed anything
• fixed creation of new ships, needs testing too to make sure it works as intended
• export function needs testing (shouldn't crash, but some properties may be wrongly exported / not exported at all - report which)

@Vhati
I wanted to do that, but since I only had jre7 installed, I shrugged it off due to laziness... I'll see what can be done

[kartoFlane]

New version is ready, however is still requires testing; I give no guarantee it won't crash or that everything will work properly (though it seems to be alright, as far as I tested), so I went all fancy and gave it a beta designation.

Changes:

• Changed - Port to new drawing system - it doesn't change much to the user, but underneath it's pretty much a whole new application
• Fixed - As a consequence, issues with precision mode and freely draggable elements were fixed
• Fixed - Fixed issues with Mac's UI being stretched / clipped / squished
• Changed - The topmost visible element is always selected when clicked, the priority being as follows:
  door > room > mount > hull (incl. floor and cloak) > shield.
• Added - If hull image is obscuring the shield image, thus preventing it from being selected, you can right-click on hull image - it'll select the shield. For this reason, all shield-related controls work the same for both left and right buttons.
• Added - Weapon images' filenames are now being properly loaded from animations.xml
• Changed - Weapon images on weapon mounts are now being drawn slightly differently (specifically, the influence of the mirror flag) - to reflect how they behave in the game.
• Changed - Precision mode key modifier changed to Ctrl - as a preparation for the Shift being used for monodirectional dragging, when I get to doing it
• Removed - Room splitting is out of the window for now, though I'll probably end up re-implemeting it anyway
• Removed - During weapon mount creation, there are no visual indicators for mirror flag and the mount's slide direction, however they still work as they previously did. This will be done later.
• Fixed - The editor will no longer crash when an image that doesn't have an underscore in its name is loaded.
• Added - Elements can now also be pinned using the spacebar (mostly useful for Macs)
• Mac - Fixed - The app should now be running perfectly fine on Macs, as long as you set it up properly. Also, it is now in the form of a bundle. If you get an "Unsupported major.minor version 51.0" error in debug.log, look here.
• Note - When exporting custom images, the Errors console might spew out a warning about the images not being found - however, if the images got correctly exported, you can safely disregard that warning.
• Changed - Double left-clicking on weapon mounts displays a tooltip with mount's number.
• Note - Due to the amount of low-level changes, compatibility with earlier version projects is broken, at least for now

So, sadly, nothing too exciting in this update (despite the lenghty development time); however, it laid important groundwork for me to finally get around to implementing the option to edit gibs.

For now, keep in mind that this is a "beta" version - so be a good modder and report any and all bugs you find :)
Dropbox download directory: Superluminal 18-2-13

edit: Added two items to the end of the list that I forgot to mention

[DryEagle]

This would be 10x more useful if you could load from .ftl files. At least for room layout, e.g. you want to change some rooms on an already-made ship that wasnt created in this editor (no .shp file)

[McLovin]

New version is ready, however is still requires testing; I give no guarantee it won't crash or that everything will work properly (though it seems to be alright, as far as I tested), so I went all fancy and gave it a beta designation.

Changes:

• Changed - Port to new drawing system - it doesn't change much to the user, but underneath it's pretty much a whole new application
• Fixed - As a consequence, issues with precision mode and freely draggable elements were fixed
• Fixed - Fixed issues with Mac's UI being stretched / clipped / squished
• Changed - The topmost visible element is always selected when clicked, the priority being as follows:
  door > room > mount > hull (incl. floor and cloak) > shield.
• Added - If hull image is obscuring the shield image, thus preventing it from being selected, you can right-click on hull image - it'll select the shield. For this reason, all shield-related controls work the same for both left and right buttons.
• Added - Weapon images' filenames are now being properly loaded from animations.xml
• Changed - Weapon images on weapon mounts are now being drawn slightly differently (specifically, the influence of the mirror flag) - to reflect how they behave in the game.
• Changed - Precision mode key modifier changed to Ctrl - as a preparation for the Shift being used for monodirectional dragging, when I get to doing it
• Removed - Room splitting is out of the window for now, though I'll probably end up re-implemeting it anyway
• Removed - During weapon mount creation, there are no visual indicators for mirror flag and the mount's slide direction, however they still work as they previously did. This will be done later.
• Fixed - The editor will no longer crash when an image that doesn't have an underscore in its name is loaded.
• Added - Elements can now also be pinned using the spacebar (mostly useful for Macs)
• Mac - Fixed - The app should now be running perfectly fine on Macs, as long as you set it up properly. Also, it is now in the form of a bundle. If you get an "Unsupported major.minor version 51.0" error in debug.log, look here.
• Note - When exporting custom images, the Errors console might spew out a warning about the images not being found - however, if the images got correctly exported, you can safely disregard that warning.
• Changed - Double left-clicking on weapon mounts displays a tooltip with mount's number.
• Note - Due to the amount of low-level changes, compatibility with earlier version projects is broken, at least for now

So, sadly, nothing too exciting in this update (despite the lenghty development time); however, it laid important groundwork for me to finally get around to implementing the option to edit gibs.

For now, keep in mind that this is a "beta" version - so be a good modder and report any and all bugs you find
Dropbox download directory: Superluminal 18-2-13

edit: Added two items to the end of the list that I forgot to mention

Would be great...

I wish it was compatible with the other versions. fffu.

[kartoFlane]

This would be 10x more useful if you could load from .ftl files. At least for room layout, e.g. you want to change some rooms on an already-made ship that wasnt created in this editor (no .shp file)

I actually planned to do this for the next version; importing an existing layout from a .txt shouldn't be too hard, too.

@McLovin
I'm trying to find a way to make them compatible again, but the problem is that old project files reference variables that no longer exist within the program, and that crashes the app.
However, it seems that you can open the .shp files in a fairly readable format using Wordpad - it may be possible to alter them to be loaded correctly... Not promising anything, though.

Another idea is writing a small program that converts the files over. This would actually be a better solution, since I could just copy-paste classes from new and old version and try to work from that...

edit: I've tried to write a small converter, but hit a stonewall in the form of Java's serialization protocol and its safety/consistency checks... So it's a no-go, as far as my knowledge goes.
There is, however, another possible way; just open your project in the 6-2 version of Superluminal, and export it. Then add the exported files to your unpacked /data/ and /resource/ directories used by Superluminal. Copy-paste the entry from exported blueprints.xml.append to the end of blueprints.xml in /data/ directory (or autoBlueprints.xml, if it was an enemy ship), then open up Superluminal 18-2 and load the ship you exported your project as. Should work.
Link to old 6-2 download directory

[nataryeahbuddy]

This is awesome! We need to create a new subforum for ship editors or at least pin this up to the top! This is the best ship editor I've seen so far!

[electricz0ltan]

hmm, things are broken for me...

I can't load any of the default ships. I click load and I assume that I have to find the resource and data folders in the FTL app, but the file browser that opens won't access any other folder save for the default "documents" folder. I go to applications but then the browser freezes while searching for the folder.

I think I read somewhere here that you have to have certain file names for certain things on the ship such as the hull, shields etc. - If this is true could you put the file names in the google doc? if not then something is quite broken, as opening png files closes the program.

I'm having the same problem with Superluminal, I can't load any ships and I can't find any graphics. Even upon looking at the Google Docs Instructions for a long time, I still can't figure out how to load a ship onto Superluminal. I found the data.dat and I have data.dat-unpacked but I don't know what Superluminal loads and how to find that wherever it may be. None of the files appear to be open-able by Superluminal. Little help please?

I am using a Mac.

[kartoFlane]

@natar
Welp, thank you :E I'm flattered

@electricz0ltan
You have to point the app to the directories that contain the files. So, the data-unpacked has this huge bunch of txt and xml files -- when you open Superluminal, go to File > Load Ship and click on the upper browse button, and navigate to your data-unpacked folder. Select this folder, then click OK.
Look here; I don't think it can be explained with any more detail :E

Frankly, I'm starting to consider automating the process for the next update...

[speedoflight]

Hi, great ship editor, yet i cant get it to work or maybe im just dumb lol. How to add systems?? cuz i cant add em, the place square appears always red and i cant do anything with it. Im new to the game and to the modding community and maybe im just asking something stupid..

I dont know how the weapon slots work as well, wats the purpose of the yellow arrow?? since i cant change the direction of that arrow, it is just informative??

Anyways, is there some way to make the program remember the last paths used???? i am experimenting, and its very frustrating to search the files everytime i need to reload an image or something else.

I plan to make in the future a star trek ship mod, im experimenting with the defiant, since it has a relative simply design. Any advise will be really appreciated.

But since this is the only ship editor that works (almost) in my pc xD, im here to give u my full support lol.

[kartoFlane]

With the room creation tool, you can only place rooms "under" the anchor (the light-blue box with green and red lines going out of it) - by "under" I mean, to the bottom-right of the light-blue box.
Once you create a room, you can add a system by choosing the Selection Tool (by clicking the leftmost button, or pressing Q), and then right-clicking on the room you wish to add a system to. A dropdown menu will appear and you'll be able to choose a system there. Then you can double-left-click on that room to select level and power usage of that system.
Weapon slots - the yellow arrow indicates the direction in which the weapon will move when it is powered up. You can change it by shift-right-clicking on the weapon with Selection Tool.
As for paths, there's nothing you can do about it now - I'll have to set up individual variables for each dialog...